Wednesday 31 August 2011 12.37 EDT
First published on Wednesday 31 August 2011 12.37 EDT

Frederick Wiseman is the deep-cover anthropologist of American cinema. Over a 50-year career his documentaries have hidden out in the wings, playing quiet witness to the workings of various social institutions and inviting the viewers to draw their own conclusions. Wiseman has visited schools and hospitals, the Ballet de l'Opera National and the Idaho state legislature. But the spry, reflective Crazy Horse catches him on more ostensibly exotic ground, backstage at a Paris cabaret, purveyor of reputedly "the best chic nude show in the world". Very gently, Wiseman disrobes the spectacle and peers inside.

The dancers at Crazy Horse put on two shows a night, seven days a week. These shows come with names like Desire, Upside Down and Baby Buns and involve a lot of synchronised bump-and-grind. Sometimes the girls are dressed as horny astronauts, sometimes as sexy beefeaters. On other occasions they jiggle about in the altogether with their limbs lit in leopard-print patterns or their rumps painted with large red blotches that make it look as though they're suffering from some ghastly tropical disease. All of which is perfectly diverting, assuming one is turned on by leopards, or beefeaters, or girls in the grip of a ghastly tropical disease.

But Wiseman then wheels back the camera to show the lighting rigs and fitting rooms, the cleaners and the clientele (who are moneyed, middle-aged and about 30% female). We meet Philippe, the harassed choreographer who absolutely-positively needs more time to stage a new show called Evolution ("to give me one or two weeks – it's inhuman"). Plus, of course, we get to sit in on the rehearsals where the erotic allure of two undulating, scantily clad sirens is comprehensively doused by the sound of Philippe barking orders from the sidelines. "And kiss!" he bellows. "Well arched. Buttocks!"

Crazy Horse is languid, impressionistic and perhaps a shade overlong at 134-minutes. At times I would have liked more signposts along the way – more sense of an overriding narrative structure – though this is surely to miss the point of Wiseman's visit. The director is not here to celebrate the cabaret, nor even to critique it, exactly. Instead, he comes to observe the process and audit the workload. In fact, if Crazy Horse contains anything so crude and reductive as a message it is probably that work is hard and is therefore deserving of respect, whether that work be in the corridors of local government or beneath the lights of the Paris cabaret. Lest there be any doubt, it takes a lot of graft, sweat and strain to maintain the illusion that you're a libidinous dancing leopard, just dying to be pawed.